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)LD SOUTH MEETING-HOUSE. 

REPORT 



MEETING OF THE INHABITANTS OF CAMBIilDGE, 

IN 

MEMORIAL HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE. 
JANUARY i8th, 1877. 



ADDRESSES BY 

President CHARLES W. ELIOT, 
Prof. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 
Rev. ALEXANDER McKENZIE, 
Hon. CHARLES T. RUSSELL, 
Chief-Justice CHARLES L. BRADLEY, 
Rev. GEORGE Z. GRAY, 
Rev. GEORGE W. BRIGGS. 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF GEORGE H. ELLIS. 

1877. 



OLD SOUTH MEETING-HOUSE. 

REPORT 



MEETING OF THE INHABITANTS OE CAMBRIDGE, 

IN 

MEMORIAL HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE, 
JANUARY i8th, 1877. 



ADDRESSES BY 

President CHARLES W. ELIOT, 
Prof. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 
Rev. ALEXANDER McKENZIE, 
Hon. CHARLES T. RUSSELL, 
Chief-Justice CHARLES L. BRADLEY, 
Rev. GEORGE Z. GRAY, 
Rev. GEORGE W. BRIGGS. 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF GEORGE H. ELLIS. 

1877. 



REPORT. 



A public meeting to promote the raising of money for the 
preservation of the Old South Meeting-house was called by 
the Cambridge members of the General Committee at the 
Sanders Theatre (Memorial Hall), Old Cambridge, on Thurs- 
day, Jan. i8, at 7.30 p.m. 

The meeting was called to order by the Hon. Emory Wash- 
burn and Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard Univer- 
sity was chosen Chairman. On taking the chair President 
Eliot said : — 

Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

We all feel a strong purpose, I doubt not, to do whatever in us 
lies to preserve the most interesting building which now stands in 
New England. Its life has been very gravely threatened. Before 
we can clearly decide what we will do in these premises, it is nec- 
essary to get a distinct view of what has already been done. I have 
heard it stated frequently during the last two or three months that 
the Old South has already been saved. I wish that were true ; but 
it is very far from the truth. Thanks to the enthusiastic and 
devoted exertions of a few ladies during the past summer, this com- 
munity has an opportunity of saving the Old South; but it is not 
saved To buy it, about $400,000 must be raised sooner or later. 
Towards that sum, about $50,000 have already been contributed by 
a very large number of persons, a large proportion of the subscrip- 
tion being in small sums. The treasurer of the committee informs 
us that if $100,000 can now be raised in addition to this $50,000 by 
the first of April next, certain generous persons have pledged a 
further sum of $100,000 to this object. That is to say, if we can 
raise $100,000 by the first of April next, the treasurer will then 



have in his hands ^250,000 toward the purchase of the church. 
That is a long step, and will make it tolerably easy to bear the 
interest payments on the remaining $150,000 till times improve. 
All that immediately needs to be done is, therefore, to raise 
$100,000 between now and the first of April. I take pains to make 
this statement, because I have repeatedly seen it stated in the 
public papers, once at least upon the authority of a gentleman who 
has been active in this enterprise of saving the Old South Church, 
that the Old South was already saved. We still have it before us 
to do that. I think it is quite clear also that the money cannot be 
raised in the way in which large subscriptions have, within the last 
ten years, been raised in this community. Possibly few of you are 
aware how small the number of contributors ordinarily is to a 
subscription for a public object. The city of Boston has a well- 
deserved reputation for the munificence of its citizens ; but that 
reputation is based upon the generosity of but a few hundreds of 
people. The superb hall, in which we are now assembled, was 
built by one of the largest subscriptions of the last ten years, and 
yet but a few score of persons united in that subscription. At the 
present time it is not practicable to raise any considerable sum of 
money in that way. The reason is, that many of the ladies and 
gentlemen who have been the most bountiful givers for public 
objects have incomes now so much reduced that they are not able 
to make such contributions as they have gladly made in the past. 
We must appeal, therefore, to a very much larger number of per- 
sons. Instead of raising this sum by a few gifts of $1000 or $5000 
each, it must be raised by hundreds, by fifties, by fives, and by one- 
dollar subscriptions, and the appeal, therefore, must be made to a 
very much larger number of persons than has been at all customary 
with us. It is partly to promote the necessary interest in a large 
number of persons that the committee in charge of this undertaking 
have decided to hold a certain number of public meetings in Boston 
and the towns adjacent. Of that series of meetings, this is the 
first. 

I am not going to undertake, ladies and gentlemen, to account 
in any way for the impulse, which I am sure we all feel strongly, to 
save this building. It is chiefly because we love it, I think, that 
we want to save it, and love is unreasoning, cannot be accounted 
for, has no logical processes. We love it because it has always 
been speaking to us of courage, uprightness, independence ; we 
love it because of the memories of famous men which are asso- 



ciated with it ; we love it because it is one of the familiar objects of 
our youth ; we love it because it ha§ always spoken to us that one 
emphatic word, which Thoreau, I believe, said was the whole 
speech of Bunker Hill monument, " Here." Here, on this ver}- 
spot, within these very walls, were words spoken which were heard 
round the world. Here, in this very place, our forefathers were 
wrought up to resist the fearful power of Great Britain ; here they 
worshipped their stern God. I think we Americans have great 
need to cling to every object to which we are locally attached. I 
believe that national sentiment is but an extension of local attach- 
ment — a vague, but all-powerful sentiment, — and that local attach- 
ment clings to small, familiar objects, — like the decent church, 
the hawthorn bush, the spreading tree, which were the charms of 
sweet Auburn. I think we Americans particularly need to culti- 
vate our historical sense, lest we lose the lessons of the past in this 
incessant whirl of the trivial present; and we are in much more 
danger of forgetting the lessons of the past than former generations 
have been, for telegrams and daily papers are almost our sole read- 
ing. Intent upon the ephemeral records of yesterday, we have no 
eyes for the story of years and centuries gone by. I think we need 
to recall our own past, to remember our fathers, to remember our 
heritage. In this present moment of political difficulty let us bear 
in mind what we owe to those that have gone before us ; to the 
generations that were brought up in this old building, — in the ver}- 
Old South that we desire to preserve. We depend at this moment 
upon the political sense and sober second-thought, the self-control 
and readiness in emergencies which in good measure we have 
inherited from the generations that have gone before us. Let us 
pay this debt by reverently preserving the shrines of those genera- 
tions. If we have any faith in free speech, if we have any faith in 
freedom of public meeting, why, the Old South is the best shrine 
of that faith. 

If anything more were necessary to incite me to do my best to 
help save this building, I should find that spur in the arguments 
that have been used for destroying it. I have heard it said, over 
and over again, that the Old South was in the way; that the people 
wanted more room to get by each other in Washington Street ; that 
they had to turn aside for this old, useless building. Now it seems 
to me that it would be a deal better that a good many comin;:, 
generations should turn aside and not set their feet on the place 
where the Old South stood. [Applause.] We would turn aside 



that we might not tread upon the graves of strangers even, and 
shall there be nothing but a sidewalk where the tower of the Old 
South has pointed upward these four generations and more? I 
have heard it said that that lot was needed for business purposes. 
Now I have as high an opinion of the value of prosperous, thriving, 
energetic business as any one ; but let us not forget that we do not 
live to eat, but eat to live. Somehow it is not the times of prosper- 
ous business in Boston that we best love to remember, but the 
times of Boston's adversity, bravely borne ; the times when the Old 
South was the hearth of a fire that kept warm our ancestors' hearts 
in the midst of trial, depression, and sufifering. I have heard it said 
very lately as a reason for not contributing to this pious under- 
taking, that it was not our business to save the Old South. It was 
the business of that society, of that congregation, of those proprie- 
tors to save it, and if they would not do it, why should we ? I 
must say I have a considerable sympathy with the proposition that 
it was the business of the proprietors of the Old South Church to 
preserve that structure for posterity ; but if they didn't see their 
way to do it, shall we lose the building because they are poor in 
spirit ? Their conduct should rather incite us to prove that there is 
a better spirit in this community than the majority of the proprie- 
tors of that church have heretofore exhibited. [Applause.] 

But, ladies and gentlemen, I am detaining you too long from the 
sound of more persuasive voices. It is my privilege to ask to ad- 
dress you first a townsman of ours, who, in one of the noblest of 
his poems, has said much of " loving those roots that feed us from 
the past "; and I propose to call upon him, in his own words, as a 

"Born disciple of an elder time, 
(For him sufficient, friendlier than the new,) 
Who in his blood feels motions of the past." 

I ask Professor James Russell Lowell to say something to us. 
[Loud applause.] 

ADDRESS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: — 

I think this is the second occasion on which I have had the 
pleasure of publicly addressing my neighbors in Cambridge. Dur- 
ing the late presidential canvass, I was asked to preside at a polit- 
ical meeting, and my speech on taking the chair was so — what shall 



I say ? — well, so impartial that I was never again invited to perform 
a similar function, I was not encouraged by the result of that first 
experiment I confess. The cheerfulness, however, with which you 
receive me convinces me that you expect a short speech, and it is 
only a few words which I intend to address to you. 

The hat is so assiduously passed around in this community that 
I confess, for one, if I meet an acquaintance who, in saluting me, 
lifts his with a little more ceremony than common, so as to reveal 
its eleemosynary hollow, I either feel for my pocket or look for the 
most secure corner. Scarcely have we begun to save the Old 
South when Dighton Rock looms in the distance, the engraved 
characters on its face meaning (whatever else they may mean) "at 
sight, please to pay," [Laughter.] Our English cousins are in the 
habit of, I will not say sneering at, but accounting for the benevo- 
lence, the great generosity of the people of this country toward any 
enterprises of the kind we are met to encourage to-night, by saying 
that an American has nothing else to do with his money; he can- 
not found a family ; there is no use in building a house for other 
people to live in ; and, accordingly, he very naturally pours his 
money into the first hat that offers. This is an easy solution of it, 
and I grant that a great deal of our charity, perhaps, is the result 
of cowardice. We have not the courage to take either of the 
methods which our friend. Dr. Holmes, recommends, either to 
show the persistent applicant to the door, or " go very quietly and 
drop a button in the hat." But I think myself that this is a very 
creditable kind of communism, this sentiment which is so prevail- 
ing here, that every man who has more money, even if it is very 
little, than he knows what to do with, and that any man who has a 
little money to spare, owes it to the public. To me, there is some- 
thing very fine in this public-spirited instinct. 

Now the building which we are asked to save is not, I think — 
I see the Professor of Fine Arts in front of me, and I will not 
appeal to him to say that it is, — a model of architecture. [Laugh- 
ter,] I do not think it is in any aesthetic sense. It is not in that 
sense ; but in another it seems to me a model of architecture. It 
was the best thing that our fathers could do in iheir day, and they 
thought it beautiful. I have no doubt they thought it beautiful. 
When my father came over from Europe seventy years ago, one of 
his parishioners, as he afterwards told me, said to him : " Well, Mr. 
Lowell, you have seen all the finest buildings in Europe now ; 
but I suppose you never saw any like our meeting-house." [Laugh- 



8 

ten] Now, I confess, you do not find anything like the Old 
South in Europe ; but to me it is like the feeling I have toward our 
college buildings, for instance. There is a pathos of poverty about 
them that touches me as no grandeur or grace of architecture 
could. [Loud laughter.] Nay, I am speaking seriously. They 
recall the "day of small things," of generosity when it was hard to 
be generous. For it was a great deal harder for our fathers to 
build such a building as the Old South than it is for us to build a 
beautiful hall like the one we are in now, exceedingly creditable as 
it is to the generosity of the Alumni of Harvard College. It seems 
to me that when we hear so much said about the continuity of 
history, and that truth is impressed upon us with such almost weari- 
some iteration by some recent historical writers, it is well for us to 
think that there is also such a thing as continuity of tradition and 
continuity of association, which, I think, feeds the roots of a very 
fine sentiment in us ; for I confess, Mr. President, I am old- 
fashioned enough still to prefer patriotism, the love of country, to 
the longer word, "cosmopolitanism," which we sometimes hear 
recommended as a good substitute for it. It is this continuity of 
habitual associations, I think, in great part, that has made our 
mother England so great. She is reinforced with a past of four- 
teen hundred years. In this country, we have not a very long past ; 
but I confess that I sometimes think that anything that is older 
than my memory is somehow or other infinitely past ; that Bunker 
Hill is no easier flight for the imagination than Marathon ; and I 
think there is something not precisely respectful said in a book 
which has hitherto been highly valued in New England about those 
who build the monuments to the fathers. Now, those people, it 
seems to me, are to be respected rather who preserve the monu- 
ments of the fathers than those who build them. When we build 
monuments, a little personal vanity somehow or other is apt to 
mingle with it. I think our monuments are quite as much a com- 
pliment to ourselves as to the persons they commemorate, in nine 
cases out of ten. But there is something in a pile of stone, in a 
pile of bricks, blind though they are, that have looked upon great 
men and great events which touches us profoundly, and which, I 
think, lifts our minds to a higher level of feeling. It has always 
seemed to me a fine instinct with which Byron spoke of "the 
mountains that look upon Marathon." He felt the need of some 
witness contemporaneous with the event, and his imagination 
endowed those blind precipices with sight for the occasion. I 



think no one can have gone to Eifrope without having had this feel- 
ing strongly borne into his mind. Dante says that every stone in 
the walls of Rome is sacred to him, simply for that same reason, 
that they were coeval with great achievements. I remember, in 
Florence, how near Dante himself was brought to me as I was 
crossing a square, and saw under my feet, engraved upon a stone, 
" Sasso di Dante,''' simply because tradition said that there, upon 
that block which was prepared for the building of the cathedral, 
Dante used to sit and watch the structure as it rose. I grant that 
our association — and association usually furnishes us with most 
that is poetical in our daily lives — association is but a kind of 
unconscious, or half-conscious, or habitual memory, and the wisest 
people who ever lived, you remember, called memory the " mother 
of all the Muses." I admit that association sometimes has rather 
a hard time of it here. But sentiment will cling to a very fiat sur- 
face like the ivy, and gives the beauty it cannot find. I remember 
the feeling with which I used to walk up what was once called the 
" West Cambridge Road," (it will always be the " West Cambridge 
Road " to me), and look upon the old farm-houses that had seen 
Lord Percy's cannon pass by, and I have no doubt that they gave 
me as inspiring a sensation as " the mountains that look on Mara- 
thon " gave to Byron. I feel it still. I wish a single one of those 
houses were left. I always fancied the people who looked out at 
the windows till I seemed to look with them, and it brought that 
day near to me as it could be brought in no other manner. 

I will not detain you long, ladies and gentlemen, for I have very 
little else to say ; but I can say one thing more which, I think, has 
some pertinency. I confess that I myself was not at first strongly 
interested in the saving of the Old South. The building that I 
would have wished to save, partly, perhaps, from a personal senti- 
ment, and partly from old association, was the Province House, 
which was long ago desecrated. I would have saved it, not only 
for its old historic associations, but also because it had been touched 
by the illuminating finger of Hawthorne, who has shown us, surely, 
if any man could, what the power of imagination may do even 
amidst scenery of the past so poor as ours is sometimes said to be. 
I do not think, Mr. President, that I love the past more 'dearly 
than a wise man should. The minds and characters of all of us 
are "made and moulded of things past" more than we are always 
willing to acknowledge. This instinctive conservatism is a part, and 
a large part, of the cement that holds society together. The habit 



lO 

of lookint^ back is associated with that of looking forward, and 
fosters those cautious virtues which are the safeguards of a nation. 
The Old South seems a very costly monument, but remember that 
it will seem infinitely precious after it is once irrevocably gone. 
But what I was going to say, which I thought would be more 
effective than anything else that I could possibly say, after having 
confessed this early want of interest in the enterprise, an indif- 
ference corrected by after reflection (and my want of interest was 
not so great that I did not subscribe to what I thought was the 
extent of my means ;) what I was going to say is that I intend to 
double my subscription, and, if it is possible, I intend to treble my 
subscription, and I should not be surprised if, fortune serving me, 
I quadrupled it. [Loud applause.] 

President Eliot. — Ladies and Gentlemen, — I heard with some 
astonishment our friend say that the Old South was ugly or plain. 
We must be careful what effect such a sentiment may have 
upon our own reputation for taste. To my partial eyes, the 
old mother-church is a deal better-looking than her more florid 
daughter. [Applause.] But, ladies and gentlemen, we must 
not forget that the Old South was a church, and the meeting- 
house of a very famous religious denomination which laid the 
foundations of Massachusetts liberties. The Old South is the 
oldest remaining meeting-house of the Puritans. Now, among the 
many descendants of the Puritan Church in our time, I suppose 
that the features of the Orthodox Congregational Church to-day 
most recall the lineaments of the great ancestor, and I jDropose to 
call next, therefore, upon the pastor of the oldest Orthodox Con- 
gregational Church in this town. I beg to present to you the Rev. 
Alexander McKenzie. 

ADDRESS OF REV. ALEXANDER McKENZIE. 

Mr. President: — 

It would be a cruel satire on this stately pile in which we have 
met, a strange reflection to throw upon these memorial tablets 
among which T/e have walked to-night, if we, who sit in this build- 
ing commemorating the valor and devotion of the sons who saved 
the country, are not ready to raise our voices and to lift our laden 
hands to commemorate the valor and devotion of the fathers who 
made the country. [Applause.] There is a Illness in our being 
here. This is not the hrst time that Cambridge has rallied for the 



n 

defence of the Old South Church. In that memorable year which 
is engraved upon the front of the old structure, when the meeting- 
house was desecrated by British troops, these ancient college halls 
were consecrated by American troops who, with unsleeping eyes, 
watched the city which rested beneath that tapering spire. And it 
was because of what was thought and what was wrought here in 
that year of trial that the profane dragoons, who had turned the 
Old South Meeting-hoi;se into a riding-school, saw fit to take them- 
selves and their steeds and their riding to Nantasket Roads. And 
to-day, Cambridge seeing the Old South trembling, imperilled 
again, stretches her shield over the venerable struckire, and lifts 
her lance in its defence ; and it will not be in vain. It will be one 
of the strange trophies which we bring to light in these times, if 
among other things which we are able to exhibit to the world shall 
be this, — the facility with which a Republic forgets. We have 
shown in abundant measure — I think those from other countries 
who have visited this country in the last year must have been 
impressed with it — with what lavish devotion city, village, and 
parish have embodied in svibstantial monuments the memory of our 
brothers and our friends who gave their lives for the country, in 
those years which already seem so far away. But if they are to 
carry away this knowledge of us, that we commemorate only the 
most recent heroism; that when there may come another peril, and 
a new generation of heroes shall arise, this structure shall fall 
before travel or traffic, and we shall build new monuments for 
fresh victories, ever grateful for that which is new, ever oblivious to 
that which is old, they will go back with the natural feeling, that it 
is better to be a patriot under a Monarchy than to be a patriot 
under a Republic. In this Centennial Year, whose gate has just 
closed behind us, we have been indebted for that which we have 
been able to show with honest pride, and for the triumph and glory 
we have set before the world, to what those men did whose monu- 
ment it is now proposed to rernove, — the very house which com- 
memorates their virtue. Commemorates ! The very house which 
was the scene of their valor and the seat of their devotion. We 
cannot let it fall. Do we not owe too much to them ? Are we to 
make a spectacle of our ingratitude ? To withhold that which is 
meet tendeth to poverty. Or are we willing to make some such 
compact as it is said the co-partners of our Pilgrim Fathers made 
with those who expatriated themselves for love of liberty; that 
those who furnished the money should take from the enterprise the 



12 

profit of the life that now is, and the Pilgrims should have the 
entire promise of the life that is to come? I do not know into 
what renown, into what glory they have entered whose names we 
speak with reverence ; but surely it is fitting that they do not lose 
their reward here in the very scenes where they have worked and 
won. 

Now, it will be said, it is said continually, that this is sentiment. 
It might be said with equal truth that this is an unsentimental age. 
Very well. Let it be sentiment. Everything, almost, is sentiment. 
In part, patriotism is sentiment ; friendship is sentiment. In one 
sense, religion is sentiment, — feeling, thought, emotion, purpose. 
There is in us something that cannot be defined, something too 
strong and great to be bounded by reason and logic ; an under- 
lying conviction, which men will sooner dare for and sooner die 
for than for anything that can be demonstrated. There is a senti- 
ment which pervades the land, from the pine tree to the Golden 
Gate, from the orange groves of Florida to the ice-fields of Alaska ; 
a deep feeling that runs wherever runs New England blood in its 
purity, that this shrine of our fathers, this sanctuary of our liber- 
ties, shall remain ; that our wide and ever-increasing country, 
capable of indefinite expansion, is not yet so crowded that it 
cannot spare a few feet of ground where this monument stands, 
where it must stand. [Applause.] 

There is one thought in this connection which comes to me 
with a feeling of oppression. There is always a solemnity about 
a step that you cannot recall. Many of our mistakes have their 
remedy. Some misdeeds can be supplanted with good deeds. But 
there are certain things which, once done, cannot be undone. 
Level the mountains that "look on Marathon," and the mountains 
that " look on Marathon " are gone forever. You can erect new 
buildings. We have built them faster than trade wants them ; 
faster than religion wants them ; faster than any want of man 
demands them ; but we can never build this old house again. 
Those associations which give it character and value never can be 
bought. The memories which are there enshrined cannot be 
transferred ; cannot be reproduced. Once gone, they are like 
yesterday, blended with the eternities. And it is this sense of 
finality, the feeling that we stand where the treasure is slipping 
from our grasp, slipping never to be regained, this ojopressive 
sense of a finality, which adds its deep seriousness and solemnity 
to that which we are purposing at this time. If we let the old 



13 

church go down, it is not the doing of something which we may 
repent of and make right to-morrow. It is done, when we have 
done it, forever, I grant that the structure is plain ; but those 
unsightly bricks are more costly and more precious than Pentelic 
marbles ; and no works of art, ever so cunning, ever so costly, 
could adorn those plain walls like the figures of Warren and his 
compeers which start before everyone who knows and cherishes 
the fathers, the founders of his country. [Loud applause.] 

Mr. President, you will indulge me in one word more. There is 
something in this besides sentiment. I don't know of any project 
of late that has more of practical character than this. A senti- 
ment to be worth anything, works ; it is practical, and does service. 
I have not read history so long, or so well as some men ; but I do 
not recall any time in the history of this country when the virtues, 
the principles, which the Old South Church represents were more 
needed than they are to-day. There are some lips that speak 
which are not red with blood. There are voices that time makes 
eloquent ; and that silent structure, despoiled and unadorned as it 
is, still speaks of the value of the love of country above love of 
self; of disinterested devotion, bold daring, bold achieving, which 
count it not a duty but a privilege for a man to give his life for his 
country, and earn the right to be buried in its soil when he dies. 
Those principles, — are they not needed now? Patriotism, — is it 
a virtue gone by ? That devotion, undying, yet willing to face 
death that it may live, — is it not precisely what is needed in every 
village of the land, in every State House, in the halls of our 
national capital ? If we could transplant into every legislative 
body, and every deliberative assembly, and into the heart of e\'ery 
man, who, in any place, bears rule over his fellow-citizens, — if we 
could transplant the principles which the Old South Church repre- 
sents in the midst of the noise and strife of the busy world, 
should we not be better governed, — a better people, a richer 
people, a freer people ? We want the old-time virtue ; virtue tested, 
virtue successful, virtue permanent, and whose permanence is sym- 
bolized in the house that cannot be shaken : — 

" Which nor any shock 
Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea 
Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir 
From its deep bases in the living rock 
Of ancient manhood's sweet security." 



14 

President Eliot. — Ladies and Gentkjuen, — we all know that the 
Puritan ministers were a tremendous power in their day. They 
founded families, founded colleges, and founded States ; but the 
Puritan laymen were a great power, too, — the supreme political power. 
None but church members, as we remember, were voters. I do 
not hear a return to that mode suggested in these days as a remedy 
for the evils of universal suffrage ; but when the community needs 
men of strong sense, public spirit, and a certain taste for righteous 
disputation, it can still find them among the laymen of the Ortho- 
dox Congregational Church. I beg to call upon our eminent friend, 
Mr. Charles Theodore Russell. 

ADDRESS OF CHARLES THEODORE RUSSELL, ESQ. 

Mr. President : — 

If I were in my legislative place at this moment and saw the 
present speaker rising, I would move the previous question, and cut 
off all further debate. Coming as I do, sir, to-night, worn and weary 
from the cart-traces of daily work, I have no disposition to enter 
into the race of eloquence with the trained and skilled racers upon 
the Old South course here or elsewhere ; and if I were at this mo- 
ment to act most for your comfort, and for my own reputation, I 
should best follow that ancient parliamentary precedent, and say 
simply, " ditto to Mr. Burke." Or, if I were to choose the more 
modern precedents of club and after-dinner speeches, I would 
simply rise here and modestly claim that President Eliot and Pro- 
fessor Lowell had taken all my speech out of my mouth. But, sir, 
as I am upon my feet, I will make confession here to-night of the 
interest I feel in the Old South meeting-house, and, I may say, in 
the Old South Church and Society. It is an interest somewhat per- 
sonal. I have never been myself, sir, wholly a member of the 
Old South Church or Society ; but the " better half " of me, was a 
member of that old church and society for many long and happy 
years, and when they proposed to sell the meeting-house, and I was 
somewhat disposed to justify it, there immediately rose a " war in 
my members" (laughter and applause), "warring," as in the apos- 
tles' case, "against the law of my mind," and our house was "di- 
vided against itself," — a rupture that I hope this meeting will do 
something to restore. [Loud laughter arid applause.] 

But I will make another confession, sir. Perhaps I shall differ 
from you a little. I felt when the Old South Society proposed to 



15 

sell their meeting-house, a strong sympathy with them in one re- 
spect. When the people outside rose up and objected to it, and 
said we must compel them by law to keep that building, it seemed 
to me that to sustain any such principle of external interference 
would be to destroy the autonomy and independence of the Con- 
gregational Church, Because a church, in the ancient times, had 
been patriotic, and had loaned its religious house for patriotic and 
public purposes, it did not seem to be any reason why they should 
be forever compelled to keep it for the same patriotic and public 
purposes. If Harvard College should loan this glorious hall for 
some patriotic occasion or occasions, and it should be consecrated 
by eloquence as powerful as that which hallows and endears the 
Old South, I do not believe that it would be just or right a hundred 
years hence, or two hundred years hence, for men outside of 
Harvard College, and against the wishes of Harvard College, to 
compel them to maintain this structure, not for the purpose for 
which it was originally built, but for the jDatriotic associations that 
had become accidentally gathered about it. 

And then, sir, there was another feeling. I had something of 
this kind. If property was given by Madam Norton, or any- 
body else, for a sacred and special purpose and upon a religious 
trust, and that property had greatly increased in value, and the 
building in which it was invested — assuming these facts — had 
become unsuitable for the pur^Dose for which it was erected, and to 
which it had been dedicated, it seemed to me to compel these 
trustees to hold those trust funds in that building or on that place, 
and devote them to another purpose than that for which they were 
given and to which they were consecrated, came very near being a 
breach of trust. I should have felt that difficulty. Here is half a 
million of dollars, if you please, given for religious instruction, 
given solely for religious purposes. Now, shall we, can we rightly, 
as the trustees of that property, hold it for the mere purposes or 
reasons of antiquity, or because of its political or patriotic asso- 
ciations .'' I think that was the feeling that pressed upon the soci- 
ety, and upon the Old South Church, and I say it in justice to 
them. 

Now we come here, sir, to-night, and propose to do an honorable 
and manly and noble act, in an honorable, noble, and manly way. 
We propose to say that that which is now devoted to public pur- 
poses shall be sustained by public contributions and public spirit. 
Why, we hardly appreciate, Mr. President, what a legacy this is, — 



i6 

what a terribly oppressive legacy, these buildings and properties, 
with these grand and patriotic associations clustering about them, 
sometimes are. Why, surely we would not compel our neighbor, 
Professor Longfellow, to hold the headquarters of Washington, if 
that were necessary, at his own expense, at his own inconvenience, 
however ready he might be to do it. What a legacy Mount Vernon 
was to John A. Washington, all of us know whoever went there 
while that was private property. How oppressive it was ! That 
which is a burden to a private corporation or to a private individual 
becomes all right when it is taken by the public. The Old South 
has these patriotic associations gathered around it, but they are not 
religious or denominational associations. By them the church 
belongs not to the Orthodox denomination, not to a single Orthodox 
society ; it belongs to the glorious Commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts ; it belongs, I had almost said, to the United States of 
America. [Applause.] The associations, I repeat, which have 
been gathered around it, belong to no person or society, but to the 
whole country, and we now ask the public to come forward and 
raise the necessary means to purchase this building and devote it 
to the public objects to which it now ought to be devoted, and to 
have it holden by the parties by whom it ought to be holden. 

But we are met with the objection, that this is a great extrava- 
gance, and we are asked, " Why spend all this money in these hard 
times of poverty and high taxes? Why is not all this money 
raised and given to the poor } " Well, that is an objection that 
has a great deal of antiquity, very little originality, and a not very 
good authority to support it. [Laughter.] And it was answered 
on the spot, "The poor ye have always with you." It is a daily 
demand, met by a daily tax, and not intended to suppress an occa- 
sional effort like this. It is said, "Why don't you appropriate 
this money to pay the debts on existing churches nearer home ? " 
That comes very near to some of us. " Why don't you devote it 
to building dormitories for Harvard College, or helping that ? " 
Well, don't let us deceive ourselves, Mr, President. Not one 
dollar of this money which goes to purchase and sustain the Old 
South would ever be raised for any other purpose. Men would 
not raise it to feed the poor ; they would not raise it to build dor- 
mitories, or to pay church debts. I doubt if a single dollar less is 
ever raised for one of those objects because of this magnificent 
and patriotic and glorious donation to the Old South Church. 
Then, sir, we are told that it all rests on sentiment, — it is all for 



17 

sentiment; and we are called upon here, in this Memorial Hall, that 
from foundation to capstone rests on sentiment, to discuss the pro- 
priety of money contribution to sentiment. If the grateful sons of 
Harvard have reared this Memorial Hall as a monument of the 
present, can we, the dwellers in the shades of Harvard, not con- 
tribute some mite to preserve a memorial already reared, that comes 
down to us sanctified by patriotism and consecrated by time ? Some 
gentlemen in the community are afraid we shall have too much 
sentiment, just as there is a smaller but considerable body of men 
in the community who seem to be afraid we shall have too much 
charity, or too much religion, or too many institutions in support 
of both, if we do not tax them to keep them down, as we do 
vicious dogs and bad rum. [Applause.] Why, they tell us there are 
three or four millions of dollars devoted to charity, to education, 
to religion within the single city of Cambridge, and fifty, sixty, or 
eighty millions, I know not which, within the city of Boston. Well, 
my answer to the whole of it is, that instead of three millions, I 
wish there were six in the city of Cambridge, and one hundred and 
fifty in the city of Boston. I do not think we shall have any dan- 
ger from it. I take my stand with the honest, old black preacher 
down on the Savannah River. Said he, " Brethren, I never knew 
a church die of giving too much. If you ever hear of such a 
church, you let me know the name of that church, and I make 
a pilgrimage to that church, and I climb by the soft light of the 
moon to its moss-covered roof, and then I lift up both my hands 
over it, and say, ' Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.' " 
[Laughter and applause.] Well, as somebody said (I don't know 
but it was my minister) when he was asked to preach from the 
text, "There is a time to dance," — "When I find my people suffer- 
ing from the want of that exercise, I will take up that text and 
preach to them." When any community or anybody begins to suffer 
from over-charity, or over-religion then it will be time to tax them 
out of existence, or to limit and check them by taxation. And so 
of sentiment ; when there shall be too much of it in our commu- 
nity, it will be soon enough to begin to repress or denounce it. 

Now, gentlemen, we are gathered here to-night for a special and 
worthy purpose. I do not think we shall have an unsuccessful 
meeting. My friend, if he will allow me to call him so, says we 
" pass around the hat " on all occasions. Well, if we meet with as 
much success as we do in his case, we shall do well. I do not 
think, whatever other occasion we have for gratitude, we shall ever 

3 



i8 

have that of the old mhiister who, after he had preached an hour 
or two, " passed round the hat " for a contribution, and it came 
back as empty as it went out. Looking into it, he said : " Breth- 
ren, considering this congregation, I thank God I got my hat 
back." [Laughter.] Well, we have come together, and, setting 
myself aside, you will have much enjoyment to-night ; but I sup- 
pose that President Eliot wants to bring all this work down to a 
spindle point, that throws off a little golden or silver thread. 
That is the point. He likes to have us come here and be happy ; 
he likes to have us come here and enjoy all there is of eloquence, 
of patriotism, of sentiment, sitting, if you please, like little Jack 
Horners, each in our corners, eating our Christmas pie. But he 
will never allow us to say "what fine boys are we" unless we "in 
with our thumbs, and out with some pluf?is," — and that I hope we 
shall do. [Laughter and applause.] 

Now, Mr. President, I have taken up more of your time than I 
ought. I am a little dazed, — surrounded as I am by "these 
literary fellows," as the politicians express it, — a little dazed in 
such a presence ; but I am happy to stand here to-night if I can be 
of any service in raising this fund to place the Old South where it 
ought to be, and, having placed it there, to preserve it down the 
ages, a monument of sentiment, if you please, but preaching 
patriotism, as the silent stars preach for God. " There is no 
speech nor language ; their voice is not heard. Their line is gone 
out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." 
[Loud applause.] 

President Eliot. — Ladies and Gentlemen, — I propose to call next 
upon a gentleman who had the misfortune (it was in no way his 
fault) to be born in New York, and to live during his early man- 
hood beyond the five-mile circle from the State House. But he 
has done what he could to repair this misfortune, by coming lately 
hither to give the rest of his days to the service of the Episcopal 
Theological School in this city. Over against the Old South stood 
the King's Chapel, and I thank heaven it stands there still. I have 
no doubt that the loyal King's Chapel prayed very devoutly that 
the pestilent Old South might be utterly confounded and done 
away with. But times have greatly changed, and now we find 
many members of the Episcopal Church — the American Episcopal 
Church — who are fully as anxious to preserve that Puritan church, 
to say the least, as the children of the house themselves, I shall 



19 

venture to call, therefore, upon the Rev. Dr. Gray, although he has 
not an affection for the old building which dates from his child- 
hood ; although for him no associations of happy boyhood cling to 
it, as they do for many of us. He never looked up at its clock four 
times a day, going to and from school • he never ran to fires at the 
sound of its bell, or followed the governor's escort with trembling 
within its walls to hear the annual Election Sermon. Probably he 
only has the reasons that any educated American would give for 
wishing to preserve that building, — namely that it was one of the 
cradles of American liberty, and one of the nurseries of the Ameri- 
can national character. May I call upon the Rev. George Z. Gray? 

ADDRESS OF REV. GEORGE Z. GRAY, D.D. 

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen : — 

Thanking you, sir, for your kind introduction, I respond very 
willingly to'' a call to add something in behalf of this cause which 
has brought us together. I have but little to say, and all the less 
because I have experienced the misfortune to which I have learned 
long since to submit, and for which I advise my young friends of 
the University to prepare themselves, that of finding that much of 
what I expected to say has already been' better said. I shall con- 
fine myself to two or three ideas which have occurred to me in 
connection with this project, and which have occurred to me partly 
as an outsider, which I am, in a sense, owing to the misfortune 
of my birth, to which you have so compassionately referred. 
(Laughter.) 

It has been asserted, and it seems generally to be believed, that 
the preservation of the Old South is merely a matter of sentiment. 
Well, if this were all, surely, to an audience gathered here, it 
should be argument enough. For, as we have been told, this hall 
is a monument to the might of sentiment. These walls and those 
tablets that looked down upon us as we entered here plead with us 
to preserve every relic that may tend to foster in the breasts of our 
children a love of their country and of their country's history. 

But it is not only a matter of sentiment. It seems to me that 
the preservation of this building, of which we are speaking, is an 
affair of sober, solid duty to those who are to come after us. It 
has been very truly said by one of the gentlemen who preceded me, 
that there is in the memories of the past a power to refine and to 
educate mankind. I need not plead for this proposition here. 



20 

The truth of it is seen among the peoples who have such memories 
about them. It is seen in the effect of travel upon those who have 
them not. It is seen — how frequently have we all noticed it ! — 
in the influence exerted upon our own countrymen by sojourn in 
Europe. It is this fact which makes European travel so valuable 
to Americans, and renders it an education in itself. 

But, sir, this power of the past is dependent, for its perpetuation, 
upon its monuments. Books, pictures, legends, and traditions can 
never take the place of structures, to this end. It is the crumbling 
battlement that conveys the spell of heroic deeds better than the 
storied page. It is the " stern round tower of other days " that 
keeps alive the remembrance of great names. It requires the 
vaulted aisle to make us feel the piety and the devotion of de- 
parted generations. 

Now, apply this to our own case. Ours is a new country, and, 
like all new and developing countries, this one is in danger of be- 
coming sordid and earthy, coarse, and unappreciative of the beau- 
tiful. But this tendency, which is already so powerful amongst us, 
can only be met by commencing, at once, to build up an historical 
influence, and that can only be done by carefully preserving every 
edifice that can recall the deeds of those who have gone before us. 
And, therefore, it appears conclusive that, although, since the time 
of Sir Boyle Roche, it has been an open question with some, whether 
we are bound to do anything for posterity, as posterity has never 
done anything for us ; yet, if we ought to do anything for it, this is 
one of our chief obligations, to conscientiously transmit to it 
every fabric that may awaken elevated and lofty emotions. 

These arguments, it seems to me, bear with great force upon the 
question before us. The Old South is one of the very few relics 
that we possess of our heroic age. From the circumstances of the 
case, there were in that age but few structures of a permanent 
character. But the relics being so few, each one of them has a 
peculiar sacredness. The destruction of one is then a peculiar 
sacrilege, and also a flagrant sin against those whom we thereby 
rob, and who, I assure you, will keenly reproach us for that 
robbery. 

It is true that this church for which we are pleading has not (you 
will permit me to say, I hope, sir,) the grace of an Ely, nor the 
majesty of a Winchester, which have come down from the heroic 
age of England. Yet it is a fit representative of the men who 
built it, and of the heroes who consecrated it by their deeds. It is 



21 

simple, it is stern, and it is honest. [Applause.] And, above all, if 
it is spared, this edifice will recall that glorious fact, which perhaps 
no other building connected with our Revolution can so well recall, 
— that the corner-stone of our liberties was laid in the fear of God, 
and that the inspiration of our forefathers was drawn from belief in 
His providence. 

There is one more thing that I would add, to which perhaps I 
can refer more freely than one born and bred in this vicinity, and 
which I trust you will permit me to say. All that there is in Amer- 
ica of culture or of thought looks hither for instruction. It is vain 
to say, as a gentleman from my native city has lately declared, that 
this has become the " rim " of the country. It is still, and it must 
long remain, the mental " hub." Furthermore, all they who in other 
States, are strugging against the spirit of this age, which is sordid, 
and cares but for the visible and the present, look to you for en- 
couragement. But what a chill will it give them, if you, instead of 
seconding their efforts to refine this land, show by your action in 
permitting the demolition of this building that you care no more 
for the influence of historic treasures than the most illiterate back- 
woodsman of the West ! [Applause.] And especially will this be 
the case if you tolerate the destruction of an edifice so much iden- 
tified with the Revolutionary era. Why, my friends, do you not 
know — for we do, who have not had the privilege of being born 
here — that your associations with that era are your glory in an 
eminent degree ? But, this building of which we are speaking is 
one of the few monuments left to tell of the prestige which God 
then gave you ! Therefore, to allow its demolition would not only 
be unfaithfulness to your responsibility, as teachers of this land in 
all that pertains to culture, but, with its walls, you will lay your 
honor in the dust. 

Yes, it is sober truth, it is not all sentiment, to assert that if Bos- 
ton — and by "Boston" I mean all within this magic five-mile 
circle — suffers the Old South to perish, not only will the thought- 
ful everywhere stand aghast at such recreancy to privilege, and be 
amazed at such self-discrownment, but the well-wisher for this 
country must mourn at the shock which will be thereby given to 
every hope for the refinement and the mental elevation of America. 

President Eliot. — Ladies and Gentlemen, — We have to thank our 
friend for an important contribution, I think, to the stateihent of 
reasons for the preservation of this building. We accept his respect- 



22 

ful homage to the position of this part of the country, with a certain 
modest assurance that he is right. We, in fact have heretofore 
thought, that the brains were placed by Nature upon the confines of 
tlie body. 

But I see before me, ladies and gentlemen, a friend who, Boston- 
born, went in early manhood from his native city to sow seed, and 
very lately, in his ripe manhood, he has come back, " bringing his 
sheaves with him." We shall all be glad to know how the news 
struck him, that the Old South was to be torn down. I shall ask 
Judge Bradley to address us, 

ADDRESS OF JUDGE BRADLEY. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen : — 

An apology is certainly due from a new-comer among you for 
speaking on this theme in this presence. I may shelter myself 
behind one accustomed to command, who summoned me, unawares, 
and I am here. Besides, as a boy I sat with my father in the old 
square pews of the Old South, heard the discourses of Dr. Wisner, 
and attended its Sunday-school. Better had it been longer. As a 
boy I saw the " Belfry Pigeon " of Willis " on the cross-beam 
under the Old South bell." His poem to this companion of men 
(alike in Venice and in Boston) was to me then what "The 
Water-Fowl " of Bryant is now. But, above all the recollections of 
boyhood, the reverence which as a man I feel for the character and 
the events which the Old South commemorates, brings me, as it 
brings you all, to participate in the holy work of its preservation. 
May I refer also to the sentiment you expressed at the Centennial 
of the Latin School " that every Boston boy loves Boston" ? 
" Love," you said, " was the right word." It is the right word from 
mature and manly lips, even after a life of exile, for the very stones 
of what Emerson calls " that dear old town of ours." And the Old 
South is the chief est monument of Boston — of old Boston, — of 
Boston as in very truth then the head of America, when it resolved 
in the words of its orators, "Give me liberty, or give me death." 

You kindly referred to my long experience in another State, to 
my arid studies in that charming region. May I then quote for this 
occasion some doctrines taught by a venerated Chief-Justice of the 
lit'tle State, now sleeping beneath its green sward ? The theme of 
his oration was, The present is the child of the past. "The child 



23 

bears the image, feels the pulsating blood, and enjoys the patri- 
mony of its sepulchred parent." At its close he exclaimed : — 

Oh, let us build monuments to the past. Let them tower on mound 
and mountain. Let them rise from the corners of our streets and on our 
public squares, that childhood may sport its marbles at their basements, 
and lisp the names of the commemorated dead as it lisps the letters of 
the alphabet. Thus shall the past be made to stand out a monumental 
history, that may be seen by the eye and touched by the hand. Thus 
shall it'be made to subsist to the senses, as it still lives in the organization 
of the social mind, an organization from which its errors have died out, 
or are dying, and in which nothing but its Herculean labors do, or are to 
endure. Yes, let us sanctify the past, and let no hand with sacrilegious 
violence mar its venerable aspect. Change, indeed, must come; but 
then let it come by force of the necessary law of progress. So shall the 
present ever build and improve on a patrimony formed by the deeds of 
heroic virtue and the labor of exalted intellect. So shall the great and 
glorious be added to the great and glorious, and the labors of the illus- 
frious dead still be made fruitful by illustrious living, time without end. 

Is not that sound law, philosophic truth, with poetic beauty ? 
The sentiment he expressed was born with him in that region 
whose "girdled charrns were Philip's ancient sway," whose shores 
you have reached, sir, in your voyages. The past summer, the 
death of that chieftain, the most formidable our ancestors encoun- 
tered, was commemorated at its two hundredth anniversary. One 
hundred years from Philip's death to the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, — one hundred years since! With such accelerated 
ratio of 'progress, where will the centuries carry our Imperial 
Republic? The monuments of that death remain; those that 
Nature reared; the oaks that heard amid the rustling of their 
leaves the whistling of the bullet that went through Philip's heart 
have been untouched, for two hundred years, by the woodman's 
axe. And they will remain, I believe, in respect for the events 
they commemorate, by the spring at the base of Mount Hope (when 
Massachusetts' men were there), untouched as private property, 
and Nature alone will recall them to the soil from which they 

sprang. 

My esteemed friend at my side, Prof. Washburn, will remember 
that in the portion of London dedicated to the law, amid the halls 
and gardens of the Inns of Court and Chancery, there stands an 
old Church of the Templars. Its spacious and beautiful portal, 
the polished and clustered columns that lift its roof into the air, 



24 

were once saved from destruction. They were concealed with 
rubbish of unsightly brick from those to whose eyes this very 
beauty would have been a challenge for its overthrow. As you 
listen now to the finest organ in the kingdom, has not its music an 
added harmony from the memory of the pioys and thoughtful souls 
who saved the old Temple Church from a destruction then called 
improvement ? 

Go to an earlier faith and to a more distant shore, to the land 
" dowered with the fatal gift of beauty," to the city once upon the 
yEgaian, — 

"A Homer's language murmured in her streets. 
And in her haven many a mast from Tyre.'' 

You find there a temple looking upon the mountains and looking 
upon the sea, and upward to the arch of heaven bending over 
it, amid a waste and desolation over which the oxen drag a crooked 
stick for the plough. The temple remains alone. 

While we are here, amid the glad assurances brought us of 
peace in the Old World, and peace at home, comes from the shores 
of another continent the story of tombs and monuments rising to 
the light from beneath their burial of thousands of years. They 
tell us that as long as the destroying hand of war could be kept 
from them there was no other hand so alien, so sacrilegious, as to 
touch them, even for the tempting treasures they contained. Is it 
not an instinct in the human heart, at all times and in all places, 
to preserve the monuments of the past ? Where is there a nobler 
one than the Old South ? Severe and plain it rises to the sky. It 
speaks in monumental history of faith in the unseen and the eter- 
nal, of patriotic devotion which surrenders that stuff called prop- 
erty, and life itself, to the public welfare. It speaks of men who, 
in the presence of the sword of military power, threatening its 
utmost, dared declare the truth. But I will not dwell upon the 
story so well known to you all. I will not retouch what others 
have painted. 

As children of the old we welcome the new Boston. Our hearts 
go out in gratitude to those who bring to it the architecture and 
the art of the Old World. In man and woman, in nature, and in 
the wonder-workings of modern civilization, even in poetry and 
in letters, we are the equal of the Old World. But before its 
work of centuries in stone and in marble, in form and color on 
the canvas, we have only to kneel. Let there be a new Old 



South, like the Temple of Jerusalem, "fretted with golden pin- 
nacles." Let there arise many churches and towers built of the 
rough stones upon which "time and storm have writ their wild 
signatures." May they remain amid the homes around them until 
ages of piety and worth shall have covered their walls all over to 
the discerning eye with sacred histories and consecrated memories, 
to which all the inscriptions of Nature and of art are "wild signa- 
tures " indeed. But should we leave them and pass by the Garden 
across the Common, beneath the shadow of the Dome and of the 
palatial homes, and find no longer the Old South, with what should 
we, in Canning's phrase, "redress the balance of the old" Boston? 
The old church has within it what the new can never have. Upon 
its walls we see the story of the birth of American liberty, — born 
in a church, and born in a stable, — in a church of the Puritans 
made a stable by military power. Where that hoof hath trod let 
nothing grow, let nothing be built, let nothing stand but the dese- 
crated temple. The Old South is a shrine ; any other structure there 
would be a tomb. You have built a monument on Bunker's Height, 
columnar, like the character of Washington. As it rises to meet 
the sun in its coming, shall it no longer see the same light kindling 
the historic spire ? The one is a fact, the other a history ; the one 
a poem, and the other a criticism. Both look unmoved on the storms 
of the North Atlantic as they beat upon the islands that make and 
shelter the harbor of Boston. May they both stand alike unmoved 
by the changing interests and caprices which, with each advancing 
generation, ebb and flow in the streets around them. And when 
dark clouds shall gather over us, like those not yet quite dispelled, 
it is the character which such monuments commemorate and recre- 
ate that will draw all danger from the cloud, as Franklin, born by its 
side, did the lightning from the storm. If they do not speak the old 
faith in the old words, they will speak the same truths, each in the 
dialect of its time. We yet believe that there is one thing of 
value in the world. We believe, with the Laureate of England, 
that amid all the discoveries of science, — 

" Though world on world in myriad myriads roll 
Round us, each with different powers, 
And other life than ours, 
What know we greater than the soul? 
In God and god-like men we trust." 

The Old South will stand consecrated not to sect, but to relig- 

4 



26 

ion ; not to party, but to patriotism ; not to private profit, but to 
public purpose, sacred to soul memories and to soul uses forever. 

President Eliot. — Ladies and Gentlemen^ — The Old South Soci- 
ety and Church was a defection from the Established Church of 
that day; it was a secession movement from the old First and 
Second parishes of Boston. It was by no means the first 
defection. Protestantism was a defection. The Anglican Church 
was a defection. Wesleyanism was a defection; and there have 
been notable defections since that of the Old South. Such are the 
conditions of what we call progress. 

" Nor saint nor sage could fix immutably 
The fluent image of the unstable Best, 
Still changing in their very hands that wrought ; 
, To-day's eternal truth to-morrow proved 

Frail as frost-landscapes on a window-pane." 

I propose to call next upon an honorable representative of a 
defection which the Old South alone of all the old original churches 
of Boston successfully resisted, — I mean the Unitarian defection. 
I call upon the Rev. George W. Briggs. 

ADDRESS OF REV. GEORGE W. BRIGGS. 

Mr. President : — 

What is left for me to say ? I am one of those unfortunate men 
who were not born near the Old South. I have none of the memo- 
ries to which gentlemen have referred to-night. I was born in the 
little State of Rhode Island, and have always been a little proud of 
it, and was a little proud of it to-night, when I heard the rule of 
law from one of its Chief-Justices, Judge Durfee, which seemed to 
apply so aptly to this case, I knew we had sentiment for the pur- 
pose for which we had met together ; I knew we had religion for 
it ; but I did not know before that it would hold in law. But now,, 
when I hear that rule endorsed by another gentleman who has also 
been the Chief -Justice of my native State, the double decision 
makes me sure. 

I have always been a little proud of being a Rhode Islander,, 
because very early Rhode Island responded to the patriotic senti- 
ment that blazed out so grandly here in Massachusetts. Only 
three months after Warren gave his first oration, there was a little 
skirmish on Providence River, where that, evil cruiser, the. 



27 

"Gaspee" used to chase the vessels coming up from the bay. 
Before the tea-party in Boston Harbor, before L'^-"?"'" J^J^°;^ 
cord blood was drawn there in the cause of bberty by Rhode 
Isllers. Rhode Islanders responded then, and Rhode Islanders 
will respond now. [Applause.] When this question was fi st 
pressed of saving the Old South, like one or 'wo gen lemen who 
have already spoken, I did not feel so much niterest, and I 
a" .h thaf if U wa; to be saved at all, it should be saved by 
tho e° who lived very near to it. Then I thought a h.tk tath , 
and remembered what it represented ; that rt s ood ^ ^euy 
which does not belong to Massachusetts, nor to ^'^ff^"';^^ 
to humanity [loud applause], and I felt then that ^1 ° - =houW 
be interested, no matter where we might have been born, or where 

"Mr treble'- me condense in a very few words what seems 
leftof the little tlrat I had thought of to say. We have been bu.ldmg 
monuments of late. Here is one already built ; and as I thought of 
te~ct on, it came to me how we should feel, if i™«rent hands 
luld touch that monument upon Bunker Hill, and begrn to take 
H down and level it to the ground. I do not krrow why we shoul 
not feel as deeply, I had almost said be moved as indignantly, .£ 
,°lod South! which stands for liberty, where such brave words 
we spoken fo; it, where men consecrated their lives to it, should 
be levelled to the ground. It has seemed to me during this Centen- 
nial Year when we have been observing one anmversaiy after an- 
o he^wMcr recalls some of the great scenes of the Revolution 
cd^^ng to remembrance the brave acts which our fathers did and 
the brave men that they were, men to whom such acts were na.u al 
Iras seemed to me that we were doing the grandest hing or the 
l^n We need nothing so much as to revive this old spirit 
wWch made us a nation, which has vindicated our liberty, and given 
r'fte freedom in which we rejoice. I recalled that old story-, which 
em! L singular as we read it in the Book of King. In Mn 
of one of the good kings, an order was given to the High P lest to 
restore the oM house of God. While they were at work they dis- 
covered a copy of the ancient law which had been lying buried out 
of s gh and when the High Priest saw it, he gave it to the scribe ; 
: Iwheir the scribe read it, he carried it to the king ^^^^ 
kin., read it he rent his garments in dismay. So far had the people 
tp'ated from it, that if came to them with as much terror and as 
much power as the first proclamation of it came to the people 



28 

around Mount Sinai ; and the result was, that the idolatrous priests 
were driven from the temple, and the altar and the vessels of their 
worship were consumed by fire. It has seemed to me, that if we 
could revive the spirit of the old time, if we could make it live 
again in our hearts, by these memories, by these commemorations of 
the great deeds of that time, we should waken a spirit which would 
send all these self-seekers and schemers, who now profane the posi- 
tions of sacred trust, to their own place. We need to have a revival 
of that spirit for the salvation of the nation. We need to live again 
the same brave, noble, grand, patriotic, and devoted lives that made 
our fathers great. 

It has seemed to me, Mr. President, that the very delay which 
there has been about, this matter, the multiplied discussions, the 
doubt that has rested over the enterprise so long, would all re- 
dound for good. All this tends to make the Old South a marked 
building, as never before. How many persons have gone by it in 
these later generations who are not aware of its history, or of its 
associations ! But now, the attention, not only of this community, 
but of the whole country, has been drawn to it, and it will speak 
to men as it never has spoken to them before. And so it will be 
with that other fact to which you yourself alluded, sir, that the 
contributions which are to save the building must be in small 
sums, for in these days of dwindling resources and multiplied 
claims, very many who might have given largely before must give 
only a single pittance. In the words of the gentleman who spoke 
before me, we can each of us contribute perhaps but a single brick 
towards the building ; but we can all do something, and so here- 
after there will be a larger number of persons who will say, "Here 
is a monument of the Revolutionary spirit which our fathers did 
something to preserve." The benefit will be increased by the very 
fact that a larger number of hands will be engaged in preserving it, 
Mr, President, I have very little doubt from the effect upon my 
own mind, that there will be many others who will come to the 
same conclusion that I have come to myself ; that the interest they 
did not feel at first will revive, and grow, and strengthen, until we 
shall do something to carry this enterprise forward to successful 
completion, I wish the Old South might stand. It is not a model 
of architecture, as has been stated. It is as unlike the buildings 
that we should raise now, as the old uniform is unlike the military 
dress of this day; but then it will reinspire the same devotion 
which was under the Continental uniform, which revived in the 



29 

days of our civil war, and which preserved the Union which our 
fathers formed. Let this building stand to speak to the coming 
generations, and to bring them back to the old spirit which made 
the nation at first, and which will make it greater in all coming 
times. I do not belong to any secession from the spirit of liberty. 
I stand in the line. [Applause,] 

President Eliot.— Za^zV^ and Gentlemen, — \ am sure that you 
have all had an agreeable evening in listening to the gentlemen 
who surround me ; and now it but remains to tell you in what mode 
it is proposed to bring what has been said to-night to a practical 
issue in action. Although such talk as we have had warms 
our hearts and clears our convictions, it yet fails of its object 
unless it produces, in this instance, a certain reasonable amount of 
money for this purpose, from this city. In order to give every 
person an opportunity to subscribe in proportion to his or her 
means, canvassers will visit every house in the course of the next 
few days, each one provided with a book to receive subscriptions, 
and authorized to take money, if the givers desire to pay in cash. 
These books will be authenticated by my signature and seal, and 
the bearers will be young men who are known to the committee as 
persons who may be entirely trusted. Any person who prefers, 
however, will be entirely at liberty to enclose his subscription 
directly to Colonel Henry Lee, treasurer of the fund for the pres- 
ervation of the Old South Church, 40 State Street, Boston. This 
canvassing will begin to-morrow, and the prompter the response of 
our city to this call, the better; for I am sure that if Cambridge 
makes a good start in this business, it will have a most healthy 
influence in many other places. The committee propose to ask 
help from the New Englanders scattered over our broad country 
wherever they may be living. Boston would not seem natural to 
them, coming back after intervals of years, if the Old South were 
gone There have been times when Boston was said to be unwill- 
ing to receive help from without. I never fully believed in that 
allegation in former times, and now I am sure we are entirely will- 
in- to receive all possible aid from persons who are of our mind 
with regard to the necessity and the duty of preserving this struct- 
ure I thank you very cordially for your presence here to-night. 



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